Bless any of you if you manage to make it all the way to the end.

First of all, apologies for not putting anything up here for a while. I'd like to say I've been busy with work, but it would be a lie. The nature of my current year at university is that it's pretty coursework-heavy, meaning I have periods of not-very-much-work and then twice in the year I'll have several weeks of HOLYSHITGOTTOREADEIGHTYARTICLESTODAYHAVEN'TSLEPTMORECOFFEEYOUGIVEPLEASEYES. One of these periods is just about to begin (Merry Christmas to me!) so I doubt I'm going to get any bloggier, unless the workload pushes my brain into some sort of superproduction lean mean machine mode. I know most people aren't going to be particularly dying to read this blog, so I'm mainly saying sorry to myself here, for not keeping up the writing practice. But just when it seemed like nothing could fuel the creative fire, a lecturer at my university wrote something dumb and voila! Here's a post for you.

I was feeling disappointment with my university already this week, after it came out that the Christian Union here has had a rule that women couldn't be speakers at any of their meetings for years. Ironically, it's only now that they've actually decided to relax the rule slightly that people outside the group have noticed, and now it's in the national papers that we have a practising medieval sect hanging around the campus, giving hot chocolate to Friday night drunks. Don't eat their warm gooey toasties – the secret ingredient is misogyny!

Then it turned out that a professor here, Julian Rivers, had published an article explaining why the government proposals for legalising same-sex marriage were naughty and bad and would ruin things for all of us. I was taught by Rivers last year, and he always struck me as being rather intelligent and above all, very, very nice. He just exudes niceness. So when I read an article summarising his findings, I wondered if his words had been taken out of context. Fortunately, the full article turned out to be only six pages long so I was quite quickly able to confirm that he hadn't been taken out of context. As parents always say: I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed. I've never read any arguments against gay marriage that weren't ignorant, misleading or just plain silly, so I thought that if anyone could offer a good one it might be him. His area of teaching at the university is Jurisprudence (philosophy of law), a subject which is compulsory on my course though not on all law courses, and a subject that enthrals a few (okay, me) and alienates many others. It has a reputation among students for being not only complex, but rigorous in its approach to arguments (some would say to the point of pettiness). To paraphrase something a fellow student once said: Jurisprudence asks you to define law, then asks you to define 'define'. An academic in the field of jurisprudence – a jurisprude, if you will – should be used to making their arguments precise and as watertight as possible. I was therefore surprised to see that the head of the subject at my university had made an argument that was shockingly poor, lazy, and full of suppositions with no real evidence to back it up.

The report is here if you want to read it: http://www.jubilee-centre.org/uploaded/files/resource_432.pdf

We'll start with the summary:

The Government’s proposal to introduce same-sex marriage seems to rest

on reasons of equality, stability and convenience. But on closer inspection,

these are respectively incomplete, speculative and negligible. As currently

defined, marriage secures the equal value of men and women.

Does it? How? And historically, of course, it has done the opposite – up until relatively recently in the history of marriage, a woman had to give up her rights to own property once she became a wife. And more recently than that, the general expectation was that she would give up her job as well, if the husband could afford to support her. But this is only the abstract, so I'm sure we'll hear an excellent argument in more detail later.

It also promotes the welfare of children. By contrast, the new definition of

marriage will unavoidably call into question its exclusivity, its permanence

and even its sexual nature.

Holy crap! The gays getting married might make my marriage less sexual? I've got to hear about this.

Introduction

On 15 March 2012 the British Government announced proposals to allow two

people of the same sex to enter into marriage by way of civil ceremony. The

responses of major Protestant churches to the proposal have depended substantially on arguments rooted in Scripture and Christian tradition. There is nothing

wrong with this. In a multi-faith democracy we should be encouraged to disclose

our deepest convictions; and where a majority of the population still identify

themselves as Christian, one can expect Christian convictions to carry some

weight. However, plural democracy will only survive if we also offer each other

reasons we can expect each other to share.

It's doubtful that a majority of the population are Christian. Or rather, that many of them are practising Christians. Statistics vary, but the figure seems to be around 10% going to church on a regular basis. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/03_04_07_tearfundchurch.pdf This report from 2007 shows that though 58% of the UK population identify as Christian, 66% of UK adults have no connection with the church. My mother would probably identify herself as Christian, despite only going to churches for weddings and sightseeing purposes, never praying and never making references to God or Jesus except when she stubs her toe. People who identify with this vague form of Christianity – and there are a lot of them in this country, more than 'real' Christians – probably don't find religion weighs in on their convictions very much.

This is all the more important in an area which shows signs of collapsing into a ‘culture war’ in which mutual hostility takes the place of collective rational deliberation. If the only reasons

against (or for) same-sex marriage are ‘ideological’ or a matter of gut reaction then all we are left with is mutual incomprehension. The purpose of this paper is to set out a non-religious case for retaining the current legal definition of marriage. It does not seek to question the morality of

same-sex relationships, the provision of civil partnerships, or the current law prohibiting discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. Rather it seeks to answer the fundamental question: should we think of marriage as the sort of arrangement two people of the same sex can enter into? Clearly, a same-sex partnership is like a marriage in some respects, but is it indistinguishable? What, then, is marriage?

Seems reasonable enough. Show me what you've got.

The common law has always defined marriage as the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. Parliament has altered the age at which people may marry, the family relationships within which marriage is prohibited, the formalities by which marriage may be commenced, the proprietary and financial consequences of marriage, the extent to which aspects of the common life of husband and wife may be enforced by law, and the circumstances and

process by which a marriage may be dissolved. But the essential definition of marriage itself has remained unchanged.

Oof. Bad start.

So apart from all those things which have radically changed the definition of marriage, it's the same, then? Just because the Ship of Theseus has one rickety original part still intact doesn't mean you can say it's the same boat. 'Traditional' marriage advocates often like to say that 'one man and one woman' is the essential core of marriage (though if 'traditional' means 'old' then the most traditional form of marriage is polygamy), but rarely attempt to back up that supposition. Why the man/woman bit, rather than any of the other things that changed? Wouldn't marriage's indissoluble nature have been considered 'essential', once upon a time? It used to be that once you married someone, you were stuck with them for life, unless you happened to be good friends with the Pope. Now anyone can get a divorce on grounds which are relatively easy to prove. (And this is the UK we're discussing – in Ancient Greece divorce was not only permissible but in some cases mandatory, showing the fluidity of the concept temporally and spatially). Marriage used to signal the beginning of cohabitation for a couple, with the wife moving from being the financial burden of her father to the burden of her husband. Now it's common for couples to cohabit before marriage and the general societal expectation is that both will contribute to the rent (unless one is doing full-time childcare). Girls often used to be married off before they'd even had their first period – now it's accepted that no-one of such an age is ready to pair off with someone for life, nor is it accepted that someone should get to choose her husband for her. Oh, and it used to not be a crime for a husband to rape his wife. Might seem insane to us now, but before it was finally outlawed it was a difficult situation for judges to decide on, because to them it seemed to go straight to the heart of what marriage meant – to some, it seemed to be a contract which signed away one's rights to sexual choice, even if the couple were separated. That was part of the 'definition' of marriage too. But maybe we shouldn't look too harshly on the judges who believed such things. It was a different time, the er, early 1990s.

All these factors have had a drastic effect, socially, legally, practically and economically, on what we understand by 'marriage'. Compared to these things, the idea that spouses could have the same biological bits as each other is relatively mundane.

To pretend that we've always had the same 'definition' of marriage, give or take a few little laws on women's rights in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, is rather disingenuous. It's taking a literal description of what you see in a marriage ceremony - “I see a man and a lady promising themselves to each other for ever” - and pretending that's the be-all and end-all, regardless of how the actual meaning or context has changed. It used to be about forming family bonds (often for financial rather than cuddly reasons), expediency, and societal expectation. Now it's wrapped up in the rhetoric of love, trust and equal partnership, and apart from the odd pushy mother no-one can tell you that you have to get married. It's a voluntary affirmation of the desire to love and be with one another, and same-sex couples are no less eligible to meet these grounds than a straight couple.

At root, the meaning of marriage is socially, not legally, defined.

Well, exactly. Hence what I just said up there.

When a couple decide to get married, they do not start negotiating the clauses of an open-ended contract. Rather, they assume that there is a pre-existing and familiar type of relationship they are about to enter. Marriage has socially-given expectations, purposes or goods, which are

intrinsic to the relationship. This is what we mean by saying that marriage is a social institution. The legal definition of marriage reflects and supports this social consensus, and it seems fair to assume a rather close relationship between legal form and social expectation.

This is just a bit odd. A couple assume there is a 'pre-existing relationship they are about to enter'? That makes it sound like they have to change their relationship to fit social expectations. Doesn't sound like a good thing to me. There are a million different ways in which people go about their marriages, and it's no business of mine (or the law) how they do it. I'm sure there is a general societal expectation of what a 'typical' married couple looks like, but there hasn't been any reason given why that should be enshrined in law (and it generally isn't – adultery, open relationships or living in separate homes are socially considered to be anathema to marriage, but to have laws against them would be unnecessary interference in a private sphere).

Changing the legal definition of marriage will likewise reflect and support a different view of what marriage is and what it is for.

As previously noted, we already have a different view of what marriage is and what it is for, both from each other as individuals and from people in the past. That's not a bad thing.

The debate about same-sex marriage is a debate about using law to change the meaning of

the social institution of marriage. And that affects everyone.

Positively for many (both LGBT folk, their families, friends and supporters, and people who would generally like to live in a more tolerant society). I have yet to see any documented effect it has on straight people who want to keep marriage all to themselves.

The Government’s arguments

The argument from equality

Discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation is unjust, so the current definition is unjust. The

same idea underlies the suggestion that same-sex partners are ‘banned’ from marrying. This argument assumes what needs to be proved. Any law which sets criteria for anything discriminates. When the law discriminates on grounds of a ‘protected characteristic’ (such as sex, race, age, religion or sexual orientation) there is, of course, a presumption that the discrimination is wrongful. In most public contexts, such as political life, business or employment, these distinctions should not be drawn. But sometimes it is right to draw distinctions even on these grounds. For example, the law of marriage discriminates on grounds of age. One must be at least 16 years old. In our society, we do not consider this discrimination to be unacceptable, because it is justified. It is right that children should not marry. The law of marriage also discriminates on grounds of kindred and affinity: one cannot marry a parent, sibling or child, nor a range of more distant relations. But once again, we think this is justified – marriage between close blood relatives is medically unwise and in any case sexualised families are abusive and oppressive – so we do not think of it as discrimination. It is just good moral sense. We need to watch out for unjustified slippage between ‘discrimination’ as the drawing of any distinction and ‘discrimination’ as the drawing of an inappropriate distinction.

I'd say it was pretty simple to judge the difference. One is discrimination that you can make a rational argument for (rather than Rivers' vague attribution to 'good moral sense', whatever that is). The other isn't. And I've yet to see an argument against gay marriage that stood up to rational scrutiny.

Age and sexuality are clearly completely different anyway – the former is an indicator, up to a point, of a level of human development which may lack emotional and intellectual maturity, or capacity for certain things. We have a ton of laws regarding age restrictions – on driving, alcohol, cigarettes, criminal responsibility. Sexuality on the other hand is more comparable in the law with something like race, where the characteristic should suggest nothing inherently different about the person's capacity, personality, intelligence etc. I can't think of any laws where discrimination on the basis of race is considered to be 'good moral sense'.

If anything, ‘equality’ proves too much. Whatever its causes, human sexuality is complex and variable. The commonest form of minority sexual orientation would appear to be bisexuality. This is also a matter of degree. Many people have had at least some fleeting experience of attraction

to someone of the same sex. There are people not sexually attracted to others, or who wish to enter long-term stable but non-sexual relationships of companionship. There are also people who only wish for brief sexual encounters; some of whom are prepared to pay for them. And there are those who enjoy the challenge of maintaining multiple sexual relationships simultaneously. Self awareness, desire, social convention, choice, behaviour and identity are all intertwined in complex ways. The normal condition of human sexuality seems diverse and even chaotic at times. It follows that for marriage to be ‘equal’ on grounds of sexual orientation, the law should not be restricted to just one type of sexually-intimate companionship. Why can’t a man marry two wives? Why isn’t prostitution treated as a form of short-term marriage? Why, for that matter, should single people be deprived of the chance to pass on their pension rights to a best friend? There may or may not be reasons for drawing the legal boundaries in any particular place, but until those reasons

are stated, the argument from equality is incomplete.

First of all, there's a misconception here: a confusion between 'sexual orientation' (the gender/sex one is attracted to) and 'sexual expression' (the nature of one's sexual relationships). Ending discrimination in marriage on grounds of sexual orientation in all circumstances is quite simple – allow people to marry someone of the same sex/gender, or indeed someone who considers themselves intersex, non-gendered, genderfluid or whatever else. That would all be covered quite easily by one statute disallowing discrimination on grounds of sexual or gender orientation. Sexual expression is another matter altogether, and one which generally isn't an issue of discrimination in marriage (with the exception of marriages of more than two people), because people who like to only have sex with prostitutes or have one-night-stands or have casual orgies in the swimming pool don't want to get married. Or they want to get married to one person and then do those things anyway, but if their spouse consents and that's their idea of what their marriage should look like, there's nothing the law can do about it. And rightly so. As for whether a man should be able to marry two wives, or whether one should be able to pass pension rights to friends – well, exactly, why not? So long as everyone's happy. But I'm wandering away from the central point here, which is that the argument that 'either you have to defend all of it now or none of it' is a poor one. Gay marriage rights are what people are campaigning for now, there has been no particularly good reason given to discriminate in marriage on the basis of gender or orientation, and this is the one part of marriage law which is being considered right now. One may as well argue 'you can't change the law on a particular crime until you've decided exactly what constitutes 'criminal behaviour', and that means in all circumstances for all situations where someone might have committed what might be a crime'. The law constantly develops and changes with the times; it is never 'complete'. No campaigner on a legal issue claims that the change that they are arguing for will make the law perfect. They merely claim it will make the law better.

There then follows an argument that a marriage will be no more stable than a civil partnership, which I'd agree with, though it's rather convenient that a civil partnership is considered the same as marriage in some parts of the argument and yet different when it suits the person arguing.

The argument from convenience

The difficulties of a small group of people are emphasised at some length by the Government. Currently, the marriage or civil partnership of a transsexual person is automatically dissolved on receiving their newly assigned gender. If their spouse or partner is willing to continue the relationship, a new civil partnership or marriage must be entered into. By making marriage gender-blind, this will no longer be necessary. Rather, the parties could choose to affirm and continue their marriage. This problem affects only a tiny number of people and the inconvenience of entering into a new civil partnership or marriage must be minor compared to the trauma of gender dysphoria and medical and psychological treatment for reassignment. In any case, civil partnerships would still have to be dissolved in cases of gender reassignment, which shows that again the Government does not take its own argument seriously. The argument from convenience is negligible.

Trans people (which is the generally accepted term, not 'transsexual' as is used in the article) are a minority, and they've had to go through a bunch of horrible stuff already, therefore we shouldn't bother. Nice.

Marriage secures the equal value of men and women

One of the goods of marriage is that it confers social recognition on a relationship which is dependent on the gendered ‘other’. Thankfully, we live in an age and society which has

done more than most to ensure that gender roles are fluid, that men and women are equally able to access jobs, careers and other social opportunities, as well as taking up domestic

responsibilities. Yet we still recognise that men and women are in various ways different. The point about equality for men and women is not that the difference is irrelevant, but that both

are equally valuable and necessary.

So you're saying that they're separate but equal. Hey, that's a catchy phrase. Where have I heard that before?

We may struggle to identify all the dimensions of that difference, and disagree about their significance, but as many feminist writers have rightly recognised, ‘gender-blindness’ is not the answer. Genderblindness runs the risk of entrenching norms and practices which typically favour men and are oppressive towards women.

How?

The fact of difference has to be acknowledged and valued if we are to secure equality. That is why we are right to worry about the small number of women MPs or CEOs.

Not necessarily. Some think it would be good to have more women MPs or CEOs because they bring a different perspective; others think it would be good because it shows we do not consider them to be different. None of this has any bearing on whether people who don't conform to the typical idea of men's and women's sexual orientation should be able to get married. This is the problem with the 'men and women are just different' idea – it seems to be all cuddly and still in favour of equality, but what happens when someone doesn't conform? What happens when a man decides he'd rather stay home with his children than be the one who earns the money? What happens if a woman decides she doesn't want to get married at all? Suddenly the cuddly idea of male and female 'roles' becomes oppressive when you don't feel like you magically fit them. The main argument against female suffrage back in the early 20^th century wasn't that women were lesser, it was that they had a different 'sphere', and politics wasn't part of that sphere. By now we should recognise this hoary old tactic for what it is, and recognise that equality isn't about being put in a pre-defined role. It's about being able to make a choice as to your role, no matter what your background.

It would be ironic if after having reformed the patriarchal consequences of

marriage the institution itself should become gender-blind.

No, it wouldn't. Also note how the claim seems to be that 'traditional' marriage is now good for women, since women who want to marry women apparently don't exist.

Redefining marriage to be indifferent to sexual identity reinforces [an] individualistic tendency because it turns human society – from marriage outwards – into a matter of individual inclination and choice.

OH NO! You mean people would get to choose whether to get married, and what their marriage means to them? Hold on a minute while I get my pitchfork.

Marriage promotes the welfare of children

A child represents the combined genetic inheritance of his or her parents. She is the embodiment of both, a living testimony to their intimacy and a bearer of the identity of earlier generations. A child is likely to outlive her parents, and so this embodiment symbolises the permanence of marriage as well as its heterosexual nature. We know that these multiple intertwined relationships are important, both on account of the strong natural desire people have to know their genetic parentage as an aspect of their identity, and because of the pain a child experiences on divorce. The child can feel almost literally torn apart.

Because of the pain that everyone in their family is experiencing, not through some magical genetic connection. Or do adopted children not feel pain when their parents divorce?

This means that there is a distinction between sexual union and sexual intimacy. A sexual relationship can be called a ‘union’ not because it is intense, but because it can be embodied in a new human person. Only a man and a woman can form the biological unit capable of procreating another being ‘free and equal in dignity and rights’. No new human being can exist as a living expression of the intimacy of a same-sex couple. Redefining marriage to include same-sex partnerships will have two distinct effects. As far as same-sex couples are concerned, it will close off the question of the impact of same-sex parenting on children. But more importantly, it will

sever the presumptive connections between marriage, childbearing and kinship for everyone.

Which is why we passed that law banning infertile couples from getting married. And from allowing straight couples to adopt or use surrogate parents or IVF, or to choose not to have children. You can't use this argument against same-sex couples without applying it equally to straight couples. So apparently adopting a child, or using the wonder of medicine to conceive one artificially, is not a legitimate way of starting a family. Certainly not as holy as forgetting to put a condom on your husband during a drunken Sunday fumble.

The prevailing view is that there is no significant deficit in same-sex parenting, although a recent major study has called this into question. However, we do know that the distinctive gender roles of a father and a mother are important in the psychological development of children.

It must be at least possible that having two ‘fathers’ or ‘mothers’ will not compensate for the absent mother/father-figure. The data is inevitably recent, and we will not know with certainty for

some considerable time what the effects of same-sex parenting are. Recent changes already allow for same-sex partners jointly to acquire children; redefining marriage will render these developments immune from reconsideration. Such confidence seems premature.

Which is why we passed that law banning single parents. Also, it is incorrect to state that the data doesn't yet show long-term effects: “In June 2010, the results of a 25-year ongoing longitudinal study by Nanette Gartrell of the University of California and Henny Bos of the University of Amsterdam were released. Gartrell and Bos studied 78 children conceived through donor insemination and raised by lesbian mothers. Mothers were interviewed and given clinical questionnaires during pregnancy when their children were 2, 5, 10, and 17 years of age. In the abstract of the report, the authors stated: "According to their mothers' reports, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were rated significantly higher in social, school/academic, and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive, and externalizing problem behavior than their age-matched counterparts in Achenbach's normative sample of American youth."” (Thanks, Wikipedia!) I actually did a essay myself last year on psychological attachments to fathers and mothers, and found from meta-analysis that there wasn't much difference at all. Evidence suggests that the most important thing isn't the sex of the parent but having parents that actually care – which is almost certain to happen if your parents had to actively try hard to bring you into their family, as same-sex parents do.

Rivers then repeats some of the stuff about how if we allow same-sex marriage we should also allow polygamy, which I've generally covered and could do in more detail but this is really, really long already.

In spite of the relatively easy availability of divorce, marriage is still lifelong in intention. Permanence serves important personal, social and economic goals. The fragility of

marriage is a major cause of harm in twenty-first-century British society. The problem is that stability requires the genie of autonomous choice to be kept firmly inside its bottle. Why should one be so foolish as to sign away one’s future choices for the rest of one’s life? If one is allowed to

choose the terms on which one enters marriage, why should one not choose a less permanent form of relationship?

This makes no sense. Same-sex couples are trying to get married, which to most people in current society represents an affirmation of permanence. They want permanence, not to make marriage less permanent. To say the genie of choice has to 'be kept firmly in the bottle' is not only disingenuous but also a bit creepy, as if to suggest that marriage should have some element of coercion to it.

The permanence of marriage is symbolised by the life of the child who embodies it. But if marriage includes the choice of a relationship which has no intrinsic connection with procreation, why should it not also include the choice of a time-limited relationship?

Again, thank God we passed that law against infertile couples then!

Rivers is missing the point of what marriage means to people, both LGBT and straight. He asks “if people aren't going to make children,” (ignoring the fact that LGBT couples CAN make children by various means, and that not all straight couples can or do) “then what is the point of signing up to permanent partnership?” Apparently the answer “BECAUSE THEY WANT TO” just isn't good enough.

The sexual dimension of marriage will be undermined

In law, marriage is a sexual relationship. Incapacity and wilful refusal to consummate a marriage are grounds for annulment, and adultery is one of the five facts which demonstrate irretrievable breakdown. While in theory one could imagine courts trying to identify same-sex analogies, in practice the law will have to draw a veil over the sexual dimension of the relationship, subjecting disputes to the broad test of ‘unreasonable behaviour’.

Hehe. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Rivers appears to be saying, in some legal and academic terms, “um...how do you know if they've...you know, done it? I mean, with the lesbians, when does it count? Is it when they do the thing with the.....or I mean, is it when they, you know....” This isn't a difficult issue. If your same-sex wife has been sticking her hands down another woman's pants I'm pretty sure that comes under most people's definition of adultery, even if it's not good old-fashioned 'traditional' adultery with a penis and a vagina. Being a bit squeamish about discussing gay sex is no excuse for denying people their rights.

Given that civil partnership need not be a sexually-active relationship, the refusal to allow close relatives to enter into that status is illogical. Marriage will become like civil partnership in this respect, taking on the same illogicality.

Oh seriously, we're doing this? The “If a man can marry another man then next he'll be allowed to marry his sister” argument?

Rivers contradicts himself anyway. Earlier he said that marriage was sexual in nature, and there's no reason why same-sex marriage couldn't be considered sexual in nature also, even if it means we have might have to have a mature discussion about something some people find icky. Also I'd argue that in modern culture marriage is considered more romantic in nature than sexual anyway – the lack of provisions for what constitutes gay consummation doesn't automatically mean marriage becomes totally disparate from our idea of what sort of relationship a married couple has. This argument also ignores asexual people of any orientation, who often still have romantic orientations, and can and do desire marriage which won't involve sex.

There then follows some stuff about how marriage is so solemn because of what it means in Christianity, because of course everyone in the UK is a Christian and the concept of marriage only comes from Christian countries.

Conclusion

The proposal to change the current definition of marriage depends on a sense that the man–woman criterion confers no distinctive social goods and represents an arbitrary limitation. But this is not the case. Marriage affirms the equal value of men and women, and promotes the welfare of children. Moreover, the logic of equal recognition and radical choice means that the boundaries of any new definition will be far more vulnerable. Challenges to its exclusivity, its permanence and even its sexual nature will be unavoidable. Marriage risks becoming any formalised domestic arrangement between any number of people for any length of time. On such a trajectory,

marriage will eventually unravel altogether.

In conclusion, some people wanting to get married, because they see it as a force for good, is going to make the rest of our marriages implode.

**

Sigh. Like I said, I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed.

What I did today

*beep beep...beep beep...*

Thank you for calling Santander. For current and savings accounts, press 1. To make a racist comment and then feel ashamed of yourself, press 2. To end a frustrating series of gnomic dreams, press 3. To fr- you have pressed 1. Please enter your card number.

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*fetches battery acid*

About 'About Elly', about life

As I mentioned briefly a few weeks ago, things have been happening here at Unperky Towers, quite thick and fast, like a big river of things. I even found a twenty pound note today in my washing. Mental.

I've been moving into my new place, getting on with a new (and sadly final) year of university, being extremely excellent and manufacturing my own brand of radioactive children's toys. The usual kind of thing. This has unfortunately not left a lot of time for what I shall call creative growth, because I like to say things that will make people hate me. One of my main exploits this year is being on the committee for a university film society, which at least means that I've been keeping up pretty well with cinema and will get to see at least one or two things I've not seen before each week. Otherwise my artistic imports and exports have gone to fuck. I've barely read, not listened to any music, and I've not even set up the new TV I bought a month ago. As you've noticed, I've not written anything either. My schedule only seems to get heavier as the weeks go on, so I am unsure of how much time I will have for...anything. I can only hope my life will magically make room. Or I could spend less time curled up under blankets. Quite frankly that's an essential though.

Reading this back I can tell that I haven't written in a while, because when I'm out of practice my prose reads like something Jack Nicholson might have typed in The Shining. I really do apologise. I'll learn how to string sentences together again one day. (You really know you've got bad when you're looking back at your teenage poetry and wishing you still had the same level of skill and nuance.) But if I keep babbling, eventually it'll start to sound better. Somehow.

As mentioned, the one thing I have done arts-wise lately is watch films. Here are some mini-reviews from the past month.

About Elly - Iranian film from the director of the subtle intrigueathon A Separation. A group of friends go on a beach holiday, including the eponymous schoolteacher, but when she goes missing tensions arise as the rest of the group tries frantically to work out what to do. It impresses in the same way that A Separation did - it shows you a relatively large number of characters, makes them incredibly well-rounded in a short space of time, and puts them in a tough situation where no-one is good and no-one is evil, but everyone is understandable. It's artful in a way that I don't think I've seen in any other director's work. There's also some stuff about the role of women and class divides and religion and culture (though the film's cast of characters are all from a more well-off and slightly Westernised background), but it never pushes that at you. What amazes is the way the characters and their interplay is better expressed and more detailed in two hours than in some TV shows spanning several seasons. (Except Breaking Bad, of course. Nothing beats Breaking Bad..)

Lawless - fun if fairly standard Prohibition-era movie, from the mind of Australian-born goth-folk-rocker and Burger King enthusiast Nick Cave. (I have heard more than one person report seeing him in the Burger King in Hove. Keep an eye out.) Tom Hardy makes a fantastic performance of grunting while Shia LeBeouf surprises the world by not being shit. Everyone slicks back their hair and acts a bit bluff and manly. Guy Pearce creeps everyone out. All have a good time but will probably have forgotten it in six months.

I've got two more mini-reviews coming up (possibly maxi-reviews if I have the time), but I'm typing this between VITAL APPOINTMENTS so I'll just have to post this for now.


Bye etc.

Things.

I've just moved house, so stuff is happening. While it is happening in life, things may not happen here. Sorry. Don't cry. Oh god, please stop crying. Seriously, have a tissue...crap, I have some somewhere, I know I do...here's a back issue of Sight and Sound instead....wow. You're taking this very hard.

Please stop.

"How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I don't know how the can opener works."

Okay, I know I said I’d post this on Monday. But really, what is the concept of ‘Monday’ when you think about it? We’re all just going to die anyway.

I’ve no excuse really. I haven’t been up to much except trying to catch up on Netflix all the cool recent films I’ve wanted to see (but not been able to because I live in a town with two gorgeous, old-fashioned, affordable independent cinemas that show nothing worth watching whatsoever). Also I’ve been trying fervently to sort out how to get to the place I’m supposed to be working this weekend, which helpfully is impossible to get to by public transport. Although it does have a helipad, so if anyone reading this has a chopper lying around and wants to give me a (painfully literal) lift, I’d be grateful. The one person who might have driven me there has injured themselves today, so it’s beginning to look like my only option is to take a train followed by a taxi, which will eat rather considerably into my earnings. Impressively this concern has shifted my focus away from the other unpleasant aspect of the work, which is the 5am start. Everyone who knows me just pissed themselves with laughter a little bit. Oh ye of little faith. As one who has battled with various issues around sleeping patterns I am perfectly used to being up and alert at dawn, so long as I haven’t actually gone to bed yet.

My review, then, as promised.

Woody Allen: A Documentary (2012)

I want to squeeze this man's cheeks.

One of the films I’ve been catching up with was this rather self-explanatory one, a three-hour journey through the career of the comedian/writer/director/everything who more than perhaps any other artist defines New York. I’ve seen a handful of his most famous works (Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters) and got about halfway through one of his later films on a plane once (Melinda and Melinda). I found the former charming, funny and beautiful and have seen them several times, the latter…I don’t really remember, to be honest. I don’t think planes are really conducive to filmwatching – I get put off by the experience of cramped legs, stale snacks and tiny screens, which is why I never go to Cineworld. The one thing I remember being aware of is that it felt very different from ‘classic’ Allen, which I suppose is to be expected after a gap of several decades, but I’m aware that for most critics he’s been rather inconsistent for the last two decades or so. Nonetheless he’s massively influential, massively prolific and hugely, hugely funny, and I felt the need to familiarise myself with him more.

When I opened it on Netflix I wasn’t aware that it was three hours long, split into two parts. I believe for its cinematic release it was cut down a lot. Nonetheless I didn’t actually find it overlong. I was about to write that this is a testament to the film, but more accurately I think it’s a testament to the character at its centre. The film opens with a cute Allen-lite sequence based around New York, but after that it slips into a very conventional documentary format, telling the story chronologically first of Allen’s childhood, then his beginnings in comic writing and standup (which he famously hated, but I still find his most perfect work), then his films starting at the early comedies (which I’ve been eager to see for a while now; the documentary at least inspired me to get something done about that) through to his romantic comic-dramas, with Part 1 finishing on his first real flop, Stardust Memories. Part 2 goes through his later works, noticeably opting to skim over his ever-so-slightly controversial relationship with his stepdaughter-slash-wife. Many reviews have criticised what they perceive to be going soft on Allen, but I felt it was a legitimate choice. To go the whole film without even mentioning the issue would seem like cowardice, but to briskly nod to it and then move on to more of Allen’s work appears to be a deliberate decision to focus not on what makes big headlines but on the actual work, and only delve into personal life where relevant.

Meryl Streep and Woody Allen - Manhattan

Woody Allen: A Documentary is frank about the dip in Allen’s success with Stardust Memories, and about the dwindling of his reputation in regards to his later films, but still tries to paint a positive picture of the most recent works. I feel rather shamefully that I can’t comment on this aspect because I haven’t seen most of them, and can only go by general critical opinion, which is that modern-day Allen never rises above “quite good”, and very often falls below average. It’s natural to not want to end your epic of a doc, presumably a study of a man you admire greatly, with “…well it’s all gone downhill a bit really”, but I do feel like it wasn’t being entirely honest and tried somewhat artificially to keep the enthusiasm constant through the less stellar parts of Allen’s career. It definitely felt lightweight at times, and I think if it wasn’t Woody Bloody Allen you were hearing about it would be hard to see it as more than a bit of fluff. Most hardcore fans I imagine wouldn’t get much out of it that they didn’t know already. But it is Woody Bloody Allen. So I watched, and I enjoyed.

Three final observations. One – at his peak, I struggle to think of any better comic, and I need to dig out my old standup recordings of his again. Two – it is worth watching this if only for the part where you get to hear this man play jazz clarinet. He plays regularly at a club in New York and I now urgently need to get there to hear him. As if one amazing talent wasn’t enough. Third - despite being an old man now, he seems not to have aged at all. I need to go back now and screencap one of the parts filmed in his bedroom, so I can try and spot what weird moisturisers he keeps on his dressing table. Whatever his secret is, I hope it’s something I can buy rather than just ‘stay healthy and do a lot of work’. Bleh.

In summary: I’d probably rather watch an actual Woody Allen film. But at least this film made me want to see more. So…if it inspires me to watch three films of his which I wouldn’t have seen otherwise, does that make it more valuable than watching one film of his? PHILOSOPHY, YOU GUYS...leave me alone, I'm writing this at 1.30 in the morning. Three stars

Every day that I don't post, God kills one frog.

Hey, you. I’ve been not writing. I have no excuse. Some things came up, and you know…I have a lot of important sitting to do. Sometimes it just gets crazy around here. Yesterday I was eating breakfast, and only an hour later I had to take the bins out.

Just kidding. I never take out the bins.

I was hoping that starting a blog would be the catalyst for some inspired creative frenzy, by the same magical science that makes you lose weight when you say “I think I’m going to join a gym soon”. But alas, it turns out a mere claim to a web address does not make you any better of a human. Only drugs and money can do that. So I’ll have to really, really, honest-to-God truly put some more effort into keeping this up. I’ve actually taken up running and kept up with it for the last couple of weeks, much to the delight of all the locals who felt the neighbourhood was lacking a strawberry-faced elf doing comedy jogging. Seems to give the old folks a laugh while they tend their gardens and wait for death. This newfound determination made me think I might be able to commit to other things in my life besides being terrible, so I put pen to paper (the pen of my mind to the paper...of my mind) and spent a whole fifteen seconds coming up with an idea for a new post. That post is planned for Monday (I'm away this weekend), so fear not. I have given you a tiny crystal of pure luminescent hope; the hope of knowing you may read more from me, and soon. Take that crystal and carry it with you always, in your heart. Then take it to the Temple of Sh’aar-Roth and feed it to the beast-gods.

Then run.

Hi. So...

Welcome to the blog, I guess. Sit down anywhere you like, make yourself at home. But take your shoes off, you filthy animal, there’s a cream carpet in here.

Don’t expect any common theme to these posts, at least not one that I’ve consciously created. Several times over the past few years I’ve considered starting a blog – sometimes for short stories, sometimes for politics, sometimes for TV reviews, sometimes for makeup and hair tutorials. I am what you might call a modern renaissance woman, if the Renaissance was a time when people ate a lot of Kit-Kats and then wondered why they were gaining weight. I was paralysed by these choices, so I reasoned that no blog at all was better than a blog with too narrow a focus. And so I carried on my life, with no creative outlet except the doodles on my uni notes, which psychologists could probably use to identify me as a serial killer. Having spent my childhood and adolescence playing with words, instead of with a football like a normal child, I was saddened to realise that I haven’t really written anything in recent years, except for academic essays, snarky Facebook posts and the occasional vodka-soaked letter to those who have betrayed me (“HAVE MADE A BLOOD SACRIFICE TO PAZUZU, NOW TASTE MY REVENGE”).

But last night, my friends, God came to me in a dream.

“Ciara, for Christ’s sakes. It’s eleven o’ clock.”

“…God?”

“I mean, seriously. Everyone else was up four hours ago. That’s a sixth of a day.”

“Why have you come to me, O Lord?”
“You have a gift, young woman. A gift that is wasting away. Go forth, and start a blog. Everyone loves blogs.”

“But what if it’s no good, O Lord? What if it’s twaddle that no-one wants to read?”
“It probably will be. But you will never improve as a writer if you never write. And you are a writer, Ciara. REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE.”
“Are you quoting The Lion King?”

 “YES.”

Can’t argue with God, really. So: read and subscribe if you like, but I’m not expecting anything because I’m really just doing this for me. So I have a place to stick my thoughts and hone my skills, which certainly feel rusty right now. Hopefully after a few months of regular posting I’ll be better, and then maybe in addition to this I can work on some fiction or some other project. Bear with me while I get less clunky, and while I try to work out exactly what sort of stuff goes on here. Maybe somewhere down the line I’ll find my niche, but in the meantime this blog will be like my personality: incoherent and admired by no-one.

Right, so: book review.

 
A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers

I read this on my recent holiday in Italy, because when I’m in paradise sipping a Mojito I still like to read something that makes me lose my faith in humanity a little. This book, by former Lehman trader Lawrence G. McDonald (with the assistance of Patrick Robinson), supposedly documents the culture and interplay between individuals at Lehman in the years leading up to its bankruptcy.

Good things first. This is certainly easy to read for a non-expert. If you’re not entirely au fait with the 2008 collapse of the banking system, or you hear words around a lot like ‘securitisation’ and ‘credit default swaps’ but aren’t clear on what they mean, McDonald does a good job of explaining in a sentence or two concepts that can seem intimidating or loaded with jargon (it seems to be McDonald’s story rather than Robinson’s so for shorthand I’m going to consider him the main ‘author’ – sorry Pat, if you’re reading this, but if you read down further you might be glad I’m not involving you too much). If you’re interested in the topic, books like this are always going to seem worth a look, and if you’re not, it doesn’t make the topic dry or scary.

However, if you’re going to read this book, you are going to have to put up with an appalling author.

First of all, McDonald’s self-adoration drips through this book until it stains your fingers. The first third or so is devoted to his life pre-Lehman, from his humble beginnings as a pork-chop salesman to his co-founding of an internet company with the rather uncatchy name of ConvertBond.com. All of this has no bearing on Lehman and seems to serve no purpose except to allow McDonald to talk about how great he is at stuff. I suppose it’s quite a telling portrait in its own way of Wall Street arrogance, but I don’t think that was intentional, and certainly not worth the eighty pages. I presume Robinson’s job as co-author was to contribute his storytelling skills, adding structure and, um, writeryness to McDonald’s account. I guess he didn’t feel brave enough to tell McD that simply typing “I am a dick” would be punchier. And save on paper. The bragging continues throughout, as he describes how he and his friends (who are all also really great and really smart) made millions, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat (caused by other people), and dated gorgeous women. All without ever making a single mistake, or ever falling for this subprime mortgage stuff. Before this book, I don’t think I have ever wanted to punch words before.

Second, McDonald may have been a gifted trader (according to himself), but he sure as hell is not a writer. Where were you, Robinson? Why have you allowed this book to drown an interesting storyline in awful clichés and tired prose? Why is it that EVERY TIME a company is mentioned, you have to describe its headquarters as being “deep in the California desert/Midwestern sun/Colorado mountains” as if you were trying to sell it as a holiday resort? Why so many dreadful analogies? Why is the style so repetitive? Also, for some reason, whenever a female in the industry is described as ‘beautiful’ in this book, despite ‘beautiful’ being a pretty innocuous compliment, it somehow feels so creepy that I have to wash my hands after reading it. I’m still not sure why.

Third, I just find his explanation of the Lehman collapse – that everyone was wonderful except for Dick Fuld (not the name of an obscene strand of origami but the name of the CEO), who was stupid and borderline unstable – unconvincing. If this was the fault of one person, how does that explain similar problems at Bear Stearns and other banks? What about the role of ratings agencies, the government, the general culture? These things are mentioned in the book and then pushed aside, in favour of denigrating the personality of Fuld (who McDonald, incidentally, had never even met).

Generally I found this book had interesting parts to it, but I just found McDonald an unreliable narrator, so I don’t know what conclusions I can draw from his opinions. He paints all the people in his department, whom he liked, as infallible geniuses, and the higher-ups he didn’t know as incapable sociopaths. Maybe this is accurate. I can’t know. But I’m not really inclined to believe it’s that simple, and McDonald’s viewpoint is probably not helped by him being so darned unlikeable. Actually this book weirdly does help to explain the crash, in a totally unintentional way – if McDonald is a typical example of those who work on Wall Street (and I don’t know any, so I can’t be sure), and the whole banking system was run by people as self-important, as lacking in self-awareness, as surrounded by excess and so convinced by the magic of the markets as he evidently is, maybe that gives us some sort of clue.

Amazon recommends I try ‘Too Big to Fail’ as a comparable, better-rated book. I’m interested to check it out and see how similar or different its viewpoint is.

In summary: worthwhile subject matter, but probably not worth the expense of reattaching your arm when you chew it off in frustration. Two stars